Watching over our spies requires more intelligence

Parliaments monitoring of the security services should be more aggressive and less secretive, writes former spy investigator John Morrison

Should I be writing this? Probably not if I were looking for a quiet life. After more than 30 years in the intelligence business, retiring in 1999 as the deputy chief of defence intelligence, I spent more than five years on contract as the investigator for the intelligence and security committee (ISC), the parliamentary body responsible for overseeing MI5, MI6 and the Government Communications Headquarters.

Two years ago, having had the invigorating experience of being sacked by the ISC for being disobliging about the prime minister in a Panorama interview, I joined Brunel University’s Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies as a senior fellow. My colleagues and I are about to publish an academic analysis of the UK’s system for intelligence oversight, with all its paradoxes and conundrums — and the Cabinet Office has put ever-so-polite but firm pressure on me to submit my text for its approval. Pressure which I